How do you measure the circularity of a product or a company?

Why circularity is full of misleading numbers

No field of impact is more exposed to casual percentages: «100% recyclable» (in theory, somewhere, perhaps), «contains recycled material» (how much? which kind?), recycling rates that count what enters facilities rather than what actually comes out. The first competency of the circular professional is numerical hygiene: always ask for units, scope, method, and source. Those four questions dismantle ninety percent of weak claims.

The indicators that matter

For a product: actual recycled content (by material), real recyclability within the existing collection system, useful life, repairability. For a company: tonnes of virgin material substituted, circularity rate of inputs and outputs, waste per unit of product, percentage of products covered by functioning take-back systems. For a territory or supply chain: reintroduced flows, process losses. Always physical units before percentages: percentages without an absolute figure are half-truths.

The life cycle: the honest comparison

The question «is this or that more sustainable?» has only one serious answer: it depends on the complete life cycle — production, use, transport, end of life. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the professional's tool of choice: it compares alternatives within the same scope and avoids the classic own-goal of shifting impact from one phase to another (the reusable container is only worthwhile after a certain number of actual reuses — and it needs to be used that many times). You don't need to be an LCA analyst to work in this field; you do need to be able to read one without intimidation.

From claim to record

The Simbial method applies to circularity the same discipline as everything else: physical indicators (tonnes, units, cycles), declared method, documentary evidence, verification levels up to validation by the Impact Controller. A recovery rate validated by an independent party is worth — in front of clients, banks and consortia — more than ten brochures. And it is a competitive advantage that serious circular companies have every interest in building.

The trained eye

Exercise to take home: pick three circular claims you come across this week — on packaging, a website, an advertisement — and run them through the four questions (units? scope? method? source?). It is the fastest training there is for the circular eye: after ten claims, you can tell at a glance who measures from who merely tells a story.